Brushstrokes
by doodleswriter357
Summary: Tina paints when she's upset, and she's finding lately the face that keeps appearing in her paintings isn't her boyfriend's. Prompt for the Artinathon.


**Prompted for the Artinathon: **Tina paints when she's upset, and she's finding lately the face that keeps appearing in her paintings isn't her boyfriend's.

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><p>Tina's been drawing ever since she was given a crayon and piece of paper at a young age. The passion only increased as she got older, and she moved onto more advanced tools. Her favorite activity at school was art class and the refrigerator at home was always covered with her latest masterpieces. Once she hit high school, she was able to take more classes and improved techniques under the instruction of her teachers. However, her talent exceeded the classroom and she learned how to create on her own.<p>

She soon started using art as a means of escape from her life instead of just doing it for fun. She loved painting because she was able to move freely and not have to worry about shading or drawing precise lines. Her paintings varied depending on her mood. If she was sad, they were usually darker colors and depressing landscapes. If she was overjoyed, the colors would be bright and cheerful and would scream out her excitement. If she was angry, she wouldn't even bother with trying to create anything logical; it would just be a swirl of colors that splashed everywhere and punctuated her mood.

Her paintings would start off as these multitudes of color with no real design or pattern. Once she calmed down a little, shapes and objects would appear. Slowly, the pictures would resemble real things and people, and once she was over her bad mood it was guaranteed that she had a collection of emotionally-driven paintings.

If she was just plain upset about something, she would know by the amount of doodles that showed up in the margins of her school notebooks. An argument with her parents, a bad grade on a test, or a slushee facial were all things that caused the drawings to start showing up. Once she got home though, she was able to unleash her feelings onto the canvas and the bad feelings would swirl away down the drain with the leftover paint that she washed off the brushes.

She loved painting landscapes and things like sunsets where she could blend colors and it would stretch across in stark, beautiful colors. She normally didn't paint too many people, but would concentrate on certain aspects like hands or eyes. She loved painting eyes; they were complex and could look so life-like and telling if done right. Her mother said it was creepy when she painted dozens of pairs of eyes on the same piece, but Tina felt that it was like being able to gaze into a multitude of faces and try to figure out all about that person.

Her friends had been subjects of her paintings before, although she only attempted them once or twice. People were usually the last thing she painted when she was upset, so they didn't show up too often. She had drawn them before, at their request, but she preferred to stick to more abstract themes when it came to her paintings.

Therefore, she was surprised when she noticed a theme that was occurring in some of her paintings. She would paint eyes and there would always be a reoccurring pair. Blue eyes, intelligent but sad. Eyes that had seen hurt and suffering. Eyes that looked older than they actually were. Eyes that could pierce straight through her or gaze at her with soft adoration. Even when she was painting based purely on her emotions, there would be other indicators that her subconscious was taking over.

Swirls of colors that were previously angry black and vibrant red shifted into a soft, comfortable brown and that blue that was showing up in her eye drawings. Sometimes the themes behind her paintings didn't make sense to her; she was upset about getting a bad grade, yet her latest creation resonated with broken and forgotten dreams, drenched in sadness and despair that wasn't her own.

It was after a late night when she finished the painting with blurry eyes that she realized what was going on. The background was a blend of soft blues and greens, and the person that had emerged into the center of the drawing was a face that she hadn't painted in over a year. She had tried to ignore the residual feelings that had followed her ever since that fateful summer, but they refused to be forgotten.

She used to draw him all the time; they had been friends for years and for awhile, they were each other's only friends. Needless to say, they spent innumerable hours together and over time she had begun to memorize how he looked, only to recreate him later on in the privacy of her room. There was a box in the back of her closet, full of drawings, paintings, and sketchings of him. She devoted entire pages to his hands, his nose, and his adorably big ears. She could sketch his hands in complete detail without having to look at them, having studied them intently on the pretense of watching him play guitar.

She knew that his face shouldn't be appearing in her paintings; everything that they had was in the past and it was foolish of her to be trying to bring up the past – especially when it was her decision to end things in the first place. But they kept coming and she kept trying to push it away, despite the fact that her hand kept tracing the familiar patterns that created his face.

So she put them away in the box that was slowly growing fuller as time passed. She wasn't sure what it was that kept her from burning them all. Maybe she didn't want to destroy her work that was admittedly good, despite the person in them that shouldn't have be there. Maybe it was to remind her of the person who she trusted more than anyone else on the planet. Maybe it was because she was curious as to why she continued to bring him up, even though she knew she shouldn't. And deep down, she knew that she kept them in hopes that one day she would have a reason to pull them out again and display them proudly for everyone to see. The time when she would once again be able to say that he was hers.

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><p><em>Feedback is much appreciated as always.<em>


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